Can you believe that my oldest child is in kindergarten? It feels a bit surreal because I’m sure it was just yesterday that she was a baby! However, I’m now homeschooling a kindergartner and a preschooler while my 1-year-old keeps watch.
My preschooler is using many of the same materials we used when my oldest was in preschool (see an overview of our casual, play-based preschool materials here). For my kindergartner, we are using a customized Timberdoodle curriculum kit in addition to a variety of supplemental materials. Here’s an overview of our kindergarten curriculum.
2019-2020 kindergarten materials
We really appreciate the curriculum kits that Timberdoodle assembles because they are comprehensive and include items that are as much fun as they are educational. Please note that I’m not affiliated with Timberdoodle in any way. I’m simply sharing about our curriculum because we love it and because it may help you as you make curriculum choices for your family.
Timberdoodle offers “standard” and “non-religious” kits for each grade (standard kits include items that reference the Christian faith). If you purchase a standard kit, you have the choice of purchasing a basic, complete, elite, or customized version of it. We purchased a customized kit, so we were able to pick and choose which items were included. You can see all of the options available by visiting their website.
Language arts
- All About Reading Level 1
- Spelling You See Level A
- I’m also using various materials offered for free on The Measured Mom website.
Math
- Math-U-See Primer
History and Geography
- Bede’s History of ME
- Skill Sharpeners Geography – Grade K
- Geopuzzle Complete Boxed Set of 6
- In conjunction with these puzzles, we are reading the Picture Window Books World Atlases and Exploring Continents books. Both of these series are available from our local library system.
Science
- Boom Fun with Science Kit
- DK Workbooks: Science, Kindergarten: Learn and Explore
- Human Anatomy Floor Puzzle
- We are reading the Your Body Systems series in conjunction with this puzzle. These books are available from our local library system.
Final thoughts
We’ve been doing school for a couple of weeks now. So far these materials have been working well! We’re using a year-round approach with our schedule. We do school for three weeks and then take a week off. We’ll repeat this until next August, with a minor adjustment to accommodate Christmas break. This may or may not be the ideal schedule for us, but there is only one way to find out! I’ll provide some feedback on the materials and our schedule at the end of the summer.
How is school going for your kids? If you homeschool, what curriculum are you using? What do you like and dislike about it?
Shared at the following:
Encouraging Hearts and Home, Over the Moon, and Busy Monday.
I love reading about different homeschooling choices, and it’s neat to see what you guys are using! I also am really curious to hear how your scheduling goes-3 weeks on, one week off sounds like a pretty neat way to do it.
Our homeschool year is starting off slowly, but it’s been a good start. And since my oldest is 3, there’s not really any huge pressure to dive into things in an intense level. We do “nature school” weekly, where we read poetry by the ducks and geese at the park (we’ve been using “Sing a Song of Seasons” poetry anthology from our library…though I may wind up just buying a copy for ourselves so that we don’t have to worry about ripping or getting the library copy dirty on our adventures!). We just started Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, the Montessori religious formation program, and we’ve done one homeschool field trip with a bunch of friends. I hope to do more regular field trips with others, since that was such a good experience (we also have had one friend join us for nature school, and that was so lovely, I want to get my act together and remember to invite people to that more often!). We also do stuff like baking together (my 3 year old’s assignment is to learn how to make a French yogurt cake by himself sometime this year; he also likes to bake bread with me), reading, and going to 1-2 toddler events at the library each week. I’m also hoping to start doing chapter book read-alouds sometime in the next week or so while he plays with Play-Doh or builds with blocks. It’s been a pretty nice year so far 🙂
This all sounds so great! I love the “nature school” idea. Honestly, we need to get outdoors more often. It’s so hot here during the summer that I find it hard to do so, but I hope this changes as we get into the fall. Likewise, we need to go on more field trips. We need to meet other homeschooling families with whom we can take these.
Play-Doh is a staple in our house! My older two play with it nearly every day.